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Lately I've been reading bits and pieces of philosophy and poetry; since I've been stuck in bed and it's what's next to my bed, I dip into it. So in addition to trashy novels and SF I will pick up Ways of the Hand or The Straight Mind or Anatomy of Melancholy and read a random section to set my mind adrift & be stimulated. It unanchors me from going round & round with worries.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter sucked me right in with the interspersed odd melodramas of the scriptwriter, though I nearly choked and had to put the book down a bit on the super racist one about the "savage" or madman. The characters from the different radio soap operas and their qualities or backgrounds mix with each other - and now towards the end they start to mix up even within one story, so that in the story about the priest in the slums, Mayte Unzategui shows up about 5 times but as different people! As the stories started to intermix and became confused I got more and more excited and if I were Vargas Llosa I would start making the unreliable characters bleed into the callow youth's short stories. I wondered extremely who the Mexican writer/poet/economist with the epileptic wife is (because surely that detail is real!) Anyway it's fun - Thanks Iris! - and I have the spanish as well at hand.

I love the BlogHer conference ad with me in it that goes "Nothing can stop A woman and her laptop" --- rad... who would have thought I would like being in an ad? But I love it because it is an ad for something so cool... I am honored...

Dislikes: general feeling at work that what I am supposed to be doing or working on shifts unpredictably every day or two, priorities shift madly, different people want me to do different things, I never actually have a person to pair with, i am responsible for a lot somehow, with unclear guidelines, but no authority.

Likes: the people I work with. they rock so hard. forthright, no bs, smarter than hell, productive and cool.

I can walk around for 10 or 15 minutes now, mostly with crutches. Then I have to lie down again.

It was nice to be up today. I went outside, looked around, managed to water a bit of the garden, moved books from room to room, washed dishes and sat up at my desk to eat. Also, I have an easier time concentrating.

At these moments, it's glorious to look at green beans growing on a vine!

It's still frustrating, and I am cranky, and after a while standing up, my leg is on fire - like sheets of fire flashing down to my foot.

I really wished I could swim today, but was uncertain about the drive. I know I could make it, but in this state, it could put me right back into not being able to walk at all. Maybe on Saturday morning.

G. was so awesome again today and ripped through my books all the way to I think J or L, in fiction. The gender/feminism/theory/translation/culturalstudies/philosophy books are now all kind of lumped in one place in the hallway, and there are more of them than I had realized. Translation theory will likely get its own section. Spanish and bilingual books and translated novels (because they often have the original next to them) are all in a Spanish-language section. The history and mythology sections are coalescing a bit better, as well.

While she was doing that (barring a bit of chatting) I did work stuff. I tried setting up my two organizey group things on Facebook; one recurring event and one the co-wr0rking space that really should have a better name. OOOO I just thought of a good one. What about High Forest (after the street names). We could have a very cool illustration for that, a floaty tree city in the sky. Anyway! My point was that I felt very odd declaring a thing, and basically spamming my friends and acquaintances, even though they did not seem to mind it. I don't mind it when they invite me to their stuff! Still, it was strange.

My mom sent a way more sane-sounding email though somewhat resentful and chilly. It now sounds like she has her own agenda, really, of getting my dad to look at houses and neighborhoods. The whole "OMG EMergency take care of Badger" thing was a tool to make my dad take it seriously that they should live here. I think of her reaction to my other relatives' crises and it is always similar. "You should let me totally take over your life!" No! It is classic, she wants to do something and she has to use the needs she projects onto others in order to be able to express what she wants, because she can't just say what she wants directly!

I will express clearly to her today that when I say no, I do not want to be pushed or asked again. And, I thought of several small projects she and my dad could do that will keep them out of my books and papers and the things I care about.

In other areas I am feeling kind of annoyed with myself and others. I have my own boundaries. I know it could be partly my situation right now, especially with my family complicating things. but in another way that makes it even more important I draw my own boundaries.

I like to feel fun, interesting, etc. and I like to do fun creative stuff, and make things and do things, even things that are kind of idiotic. Also I like to feel free and happy and exploratory. This is not some idle declaration of how I would like ideally to be; I have a huge long history of being productive and interesting and free and happy, and have put effort into making my life be such that that is possible. I respond well to flattery, appeals to shallow vanity, interest in what I make and do, attention, and positivity. And by "respond well" I mean, blossom with happy productivity. Also, being included in things and respected in plans. Like most people I don't like to feel rejected, cheap, dissed and blown off. Anyway, ignoring all those things about me is like misusing a complicated tool, like using a computer as a hammer or a doorstop; pointless, doesn't work, and it damages the tool.

The good thing is I am capable of recognizing that and can speak up and say so instantly. While this makes me feel bitchy, and I think a bit longingly of denial and its comforts, I think here my bitchy reaction is progress. It is good to express it if it's there.

What I would like right now is to have a juicy, hard, thinky project that I would have to figure out, that I could tackle, and do, and finish, and feel that I've conquered. I know that might sound odd. But I want to make something cool and I feel quite frustrated. I don't care what it is; or if it's for work or writing or whatever. I just need a tangible result. Also, some fun would be really a relief. If only someone would like to go on an adventure, or a road trip, or do something odd that neither of us have done, or do an odd project, in the free spirit that I love doing those things. I should work on the particular project I love and believe in, obviously. Why haven't I been? too tired, distracted, freaked out, too much reading about wheelchair brake systems and wheel camber instead; though I need to do a lot of that.

Really sometimes it's like having been off in a distant country and I feel culture shock being around my own friends and family. It's like I'm on Mars and they're on Earth and we're waving across the void. I am in this world now where I can't rely on anything (physical capabilities) and i have to stay anchored in myself.

Although I am so tired of being in this room I also appreciate its comfortableness and (new) (relative) neatness.

When I can get out (very soon now) I will be so happy and free feeling.

The part about "pain" and "hurt" being significant cracked me up. I guess it is for violent content. Anyway, the little report of what words they counted as significant were the best part of this meme, but they're not included in the rating badge, which cleverly links back to some dating service so that the "meme" is actually SEO.

If only I'd had even 1% of this information, 15 years ago. I didn't know anything, and those idiots at Valley Med were no help.

I called Wheelchairs of San Mateo today and they were so helpful and un-slimey (unlike Rehab Specialists in Mountainview, who gave me the willies and were like horrible sharklike ignorant used-car salesmen). I talked to a couple of different people at WSM. So nice... and comforting. I can get demos of whatever models, I can make an appointment and they will work with me and help write the specs for the doctor to sign. My insurance will pay possibly 90% (but I would guess somewhat less as they will likely argue and give me hassle.)

Whew.

Good titanium chair, here I come... Am not going to buy another almost-okay chair off of ebay.

IN my dream last night I was getting on a bus with friends but they changed their minds and got off again. The driver made me sit in the front, and he put my wheelchair in the back, which upset me. The bus began to roll away, while I was protesting that I wanted to get off.

I pulled the cord for the next stop, figuring that it was not too far -- only a few blocks -- and I could rejoin my friends. But the driver would not stop for long enough for me to get off, and no one else on the bus would help me by getting my chair out.

As I kept asking more and more people to help me, I got madder and madder until I was giving an enormous speech to the whole bus. I blasted them for being inhumane, and not rising to collective action to stop the driver, and for not joining me in demanding that I got to get off when I wanted to.

It's funny, but in nightmares I often deal with a bad situation by giving a rabble-rousing speech.

When I woke up I was upset from the dream, but glad that in it, I was fierce.

Gina is totally topping my junk. She's in here like a tiny purple-haired bulldozer heaving piles of books from room to room. It's so awesome I can't believe it!

And she's all like "Oh it would be so interesting to go through all the stacks of old zines, and fan mail, and papers..."

SUCKER.

Rook says I am exploiting her!

It is true but when she puts her paws up in the air and goes "Exploit my labor please" what can I do?

Also I have done the same work for so many other people. For survival or to be nice or because it is interesting, or all of those reasons.

I am so happy to have someone smart getting my stuff into shape. It has been 6 months since I've even tried to move books from one place to another.

Anyway she is an angel of intelligent organizing. I mean I am paying her but you can pay someone and they can still not do anything significant.

If she helps me to my zines and boxes of ancient riot grrl fan mail then I will not feel so bad if I die in a car accident because that will all be straightened out. I could scan some of it, and donate it to an archive somewhere.

Surely I will not go straight to hell for having a personal organizer and librarian for a week or so?

I melted down last night after a very painful physical therapy session that left me hours later in massive pain and with my leg(s) gone even more fucked up. The PT says she is sorry. My mom called me right as I was crying and on muscle relaxants and I told her I could not deal with talking with her to make plans for later in the week as I was too tired and distracted and not feeling good.

This morning she called in a giant determined panic and declared that what was happening was:

- she was going to come immediately, stay with me, and take care of me
- my dad was flying out and they would stay with me an extra week to "help" me
- they will take Moomin back to Texas with them, to help me

Agatha Fry, she made a pie
And Christopher John helped bake it
Christopher John, he mowed the lawn
And Agatha Fry helped rake it

Now, Zachary Zugg took out the rug
And Jennifer Joy helped shake it
Then Jennifer Joy, she made a toy
And Zachary Zugg helped break it

And some kind of help is the kind of help
That helping's all about
And some kind of help is the kind of help
We all can do without!

It is not that my mom cannot be helpful because she totally could be, it was just really horrible to have her push her vision of how that was going to happen on me, without asking, when I was feeling at my lowest.

Okay, it's morning, I can walk a little, crutches are the thing, I can't bend over, and sitting up strains the Thing Formerly Known As My Sciatic Nerve. I'm almost okay. Rook did some grocery shopping last night. Squid came over to offer the more luxurious kind of grocery shopping but really I just wanted to talk and have a little company. On the other hand I will be super happy when she comes back with an eclair and fancy cheese.

My phone is somewhere in this room and I need it, but I can't find it and dont have the back-power to look for it.

Bah!!!!!

G. is here now and I am hiring her for a few days to put all my books away in an intelligent fashion and to generally organize me, I am SO grateful. I wish her a super good professional job with benefits. Actually... secretly I think she would be really awesome in law school, because she smart, texty, and could then kick even more ass as an activist, but that is my Mom hat talking. Anyway, while she is temporarily doing odd jobs I will so happily exploit her...

It is hard to sit up in bed and work, I am going to limit it and then lie down again, and maybe can get through this day productively by popping up and down just a little bit. Then must go to the hospital for some more tests, a bit depressing and squalid and will be upsetting and dehumanizing as usual. You know what i mean.

OH LIFE IS GOOD I NOW HAVE FANCY CHEESE.... Humboldt Fog is so yummy. Plus croissants. Plus nice bread. I have gone too many days eating little boxes of dry cornflakes.